All of us love freedom, and all of us want to protect freedom, and surely to protect freedom it was necessary to tie Abed Hamed Mowhoush in a sleeping bag and an electrical cord, and surely to secure our basic liberties it was essential to beat him with a club and a length of rubber hose, and certainly it was vital to the preservation of our way of life to bludgeon him to death over a period of days in an interrogation room, just as it is critical to keep these and other methods of torture legal at all costs. But why, if the deed was just - and it can't not have been just - did the Army and the CIA cover up the murder, classify the autopsy, put out a whitewashed account for the press? Why do they continue to deny to this day what we know to be true, what the president's actions defend as the truth: that torture is the official policy of the United States? Is it some foul act of self-sabotage or some perverse modesty that causes the Pentagon, the CIA and the White House to cravenly hide behind their underlings instead of triumphantly claiming the 2005 Golden Mengele for themselves? Whatever the explanation, George Bush and his administration are shortchanging themselves and the millions of Americans who deserve to know exactly how these men have been proudly protecting and defending their values. Don't be shy, gentlemen, Mr. Secretary, Mr. President. These corpses are all yours.